The state’s UI system is still feeling the impact of significant unemployment during the pandemic, which resulted in thousands of additional individuals receiving UI benefits for an extended period. By April 2020, the state’s unemployment had skyrocketed to 17.8 percent, growing more than fivefold from the 3.1 percent rate just two months earlier (in February 2020). 

To address this crisis, policymakers quickly took measures to make UI benefits more responsive, including waiving the work search requirement, extending benefit periods, and implementing enhanced programs funded through federal legislation. The sudden increase in the demand for UI benefits, as well as federal pandemic policy changes had seismic impacts on the state’s UI system – from large federal UI loans that required repayment, to state benefit expansions, to system errors that resulted in the improper use of billions in federal funds – that continue to reverberate through the system and have ramifications on ongoing UI reform discussions.